


is it you inside my head?

by robin_hoods



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dreams, Gen, Grief, Haunting, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 14:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robin_hoods/pseuds/robin_hoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reek has a ghost inside his head, and it knows his name.</p><p>Written for the prompt "Robb's ghost haunts Theon."</p>
            </blockquote>





	is it you inside my head?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Di-Rects [Inside My Head](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmOCqUkPMBc).
> 
> And a thank you to Gemfyre, for beta-ing my fic. <3

Reek has a ghost inside his head, and it knows his name. Whenever he tries to sleep, it repeats his name slowly. He hears it in the wind, the creak of the door, a whisper next to his ear underneath his thin makeshift blanket. “That's not my name,” he whispers back, and covers his ears, but he doesn't need them to hear it.

 _Theon, Theon,_ it says.

“Go away,” he tells it, and licks his lips, trying to shape his mouth around the name he should know, the one that's his. “It rhymes with... with...” He squeezes his eyes shut. He should know this, because if he doesn't...

 _Theon._ The ghost whispering his name doesn't go away.

“No!” Anxiously, he whirls around on the floor, but as always, no one is there. “That's not my name, that's not me. Don't say it. What if he hears?” His bare toes clench at the thought, and he shudders, while the ghost continues to whisper the name that's not his.

He never stops hearing it, after that.

In his dreams, whispered words turn into screams, nonsensical and agonised. Sometimes he mistakes the cries for his own, but when he opens his eyes the dungeon is always quiet.

He isn't sure if he's always known about it, but the triumphant look in Ramsay's eyes when he enters the dungeon one day (one night) scares him more than anything, more than the knife in Ramsay's hand or the sword on his hip. “Guess who's dead?” he asks, and Theon – no, Reek – starts to shake his head, wanting to disappear into the floor, the wall, the ceiling. “Your precious wolf king is being eaten by worms this very minute,” Ramsay tells him, and Theon can see he enjoys being the bearer of the news.

Footsteps echo down the hall outside the heavy wooden door separating him from freedom, and he is cradling his hand to his chest, choked sobs moving through his body.

 _Theon,_ his ghost says. _Theon, oh Theon._

He has fallen over by the time he finds the energy to respond. “My name is Reek,” he whispers, “it rhymes with weak.” Blood continues to dry on his hand, and he closes his eyes.

His ghost follows him wherever he goes: outside the dungeon, onto the stairs, into the yard, the main hall, and eventually, outside of the Dreadfort's walls. It follows him to the ruins of Moat Cailin, back to Ramsay's camp, to Lady Arya's side. To Winterfell.

The castle walls are familiar, yet at the same time changed and worn, more so than he remembers them being (but that memory belongs to someone else, a memory he can't claim, like he can't claim knowing Jeyne, the sound of laughter in the yard, the smell of food – the smell of smoke and fire).

Even in Winterfell, he is never alone. He can hear the voice more clearly than ever here, as if it has been refreshed by the snow, the cold: as if it belongs here. It keeps calling out, _Theon, Theon_ , an ugly mantra that confuses him more than ever, now that he has to remember what his name truly is.

He tells Lady Arya, time and again, that she has to know her name. “But why does he keep whispering yours?” she asks him, her eyes wide and brown.

“My name is Reek,” he insists, ignoring the implication that his ghost is more than a simple shadow. “It rhymes with freak.” Jeyne looks like she wants to cry, but then she always does now. Reluctantly she lets go of his tunic – this pretense of the man he no longer is.

Even as she disappears around the corner, with her skirts swishing and her head bowed, doubt stirs in his heart. He feels a hand briefly touching his shoulder, but when he looks back, the corridor is empty. “I can't help her,” he mutters to himself, slowly starting to walk in the other direction. “She knows it, I'm not... I can't.”

“Who're you talking to, turncloak?” A man wearing the sigil of a Manderly rudely interrupts his thoughts.

“No one,” he says, turning his head away. (But the seed of uncertainty has been sown, and it's as if his ghost can hear his every word, aware of every thought that threatens to spill from his mind.)

Inside the castle, there is nothing to do but wait. Stannis is coming, they say, with an army five thousand strong. Not that it'll matter – Winterfell is well protected, with its thick walls and moat. Theon had been lucky. Stannis has no such luck on his side.

(Although it doesn't stop him from imagining offering himself up to the self-proclaimed king, baring his neck and welcoming the swipe of the sword.)

His dream that night is confusing and bright. Sunlight stings in his eyes when he looks up, and the trees are all weirwood trees, with eyes that follow him and mouths that smile and simultaneously frown. It's not a forest that he is familiar with, but it feels like he has been here before.

When he looks upon his hands, they are whole again, ten fingers, with dirt underneath their nails. When he wiggles his toes inside his boots, they all move, one after the other – and he knows all ten of them are there, as none of them hurt.

Slowly, he starts the climb to the top of the hill where he had found himself at the foot, using branches and roots in the ground to pull himself further up. The road, if it can be called that, is steep, and while he is somehow aware he is dreaming, he can still feel his heart beating in his throat, his chest expanding with every breath he takes.

Sooner, or maybe later, he has reached his destination: a small clearing littered with rocks, arrows, and bloodied swords. The flags of fallen families. He is not surprised to find a boy waiting for him there; a boy who has now grown into a man, with stubble on his cheeks and a crease permanently edged between his eyebrows. “Theon,” he says, and even as the dream ebs away his voice rings on, until he opens his eyes and finds himself in bed.

“Robb?” he asks, his voice loud in the empty chamber. He scrambles up, cold air wrapping itself around his body, and he shivers. He expects no reply, but he swears he can hear something, groaning through the shutters. Come, come, it says.

He steps out of bed and winces, instantly reminded this is no dream, while the cold creeps up into his feet and legs. He wraps the one fur he has around himself and steps toward the window. With one hand, he manages to open the window, allowing the wind to blow through his hair. Come, Theon, he thinks he hears.

His hands shake when he pulls himself closer, and the fur falls to the floor when he climbs onto the windowsill, all his previous fear drained away.

“Theon,” Robb says once more, and it's not the wind moving through the trees, howling at the walls, beckoning him to come closer and closer.

He looks over his shoulder.

“Come,” Robb says from inside the room, and holds out his hand. “Fly you will, but not this night.”

He can't even remember climbing back inside, not until he notices he has sunk down to his knees, clutching onto one of Robb's hands. “I'm sorry,” he starts, the only thing he remembers to say now. “Sorry, I'm sorry, I should've--” His forehead hits the floor. “I'm so sorry, Robb.”

“I know,” Robb says, “I know you are.” He pauses a moment, and Theon closes his eyes, expecting to be punished, for his betrayal, for what he's done. Robb kneels down next to him, and pulls him up with surprising strength, so he can look him in the eye when says his next words. “I forgive you.”

He had expected to see Robb's face twist into ugly rage, every trace of the boy he had grown up with gone. Instead, Robb warmly smiles at him, and repeats what he just said, slowly and deliberately.

“But _why_?” Theon croaks out at last, thinking: what about those boys, what about your brothers, what about Winterfell? What about _you_?

“There is only so much horror a man can take in life,” Robb says while he helps Theon up from the ground as patiently as he can. He doesn't say a word when Theon limps rather than walks to the bed to sit down. “And in death, I have no use for grudges.”

Theon knows, logically, that Robb is dead, died at the hands of the Freys and Boltons at the Red Wedding. But he looks fine; there are no visible wounds, he's not in pain, and his body is warm. “For now,” Robb warns him. “I have little time, not nearly enough to say what has to be said, but I suppose it'll have to do.” He seats himself next to Theon, the bed dipping beneath his weight, and Theon can still hardly believe any of this is happening – to him, of all people.

“When I died,” Robb starts, “I believed that you had killed my brothers. I believed one of my sisters was dead, the other hopelessly lost. I have never before been so happy to admit that what I believed was wrong. Bran and Rickon live – although they are beyond my reach, as well as Arya. And Sansa... Gods hope that she'll forgive me for never reaching King's Landing.”

“You're her brother,” Theon quietly says, “of course she will.”

“As are you,” Robb says, and unwittingly Theon thinks of Rodrik and Maron, the word brother faded from their memory. “Remember that, Theon,” Robb says, his name soft on his tongue when he repeats it, “blood of mine or no.”

“Shouldn't I have been with you?” Theon asks, the question burning words on his lips long before he's even dared to speak them.

“We all must die one day,” Robb says, “but that day was not yours. Neither to meet death, or make him an acquaintance. Nor is it this day, or tomorrow, or for many moons more to come.”

“I can't,” Theon says, slipping down onto the floor, the stone hard on his knees but he barely even notices. “Please don't ask that of me, Robb. I can't wait that long. Not like this. I can't.” He's startled to realise that he's begun to cry, tears falling onto the floor, onto Robb's lap and hands when he cradles Theon's face between his palms.

“Not much longer,” he promises, and Theon can seen the wall right through Robb's blue eyes, even more so when he leans forward and presses a kiss to Theon's forehead.

“Will I see you again?”

Robb has almost faded from sight by now, and Theon imagines him smiling. Not broadly, like he used to when they were boys playing at war in yard, but softly and contained, with too many secrets placed in the corner of his mouth.

 _Yes_ , he says, and he is gone.

Shakily, Theon breathes out and leans his head against the bed, the sheets still warm against his skin.

This is what he remembers when he closes his eyes days later and feels the wind beating against his face while he and Jeyne fall down into the unknown, alone – but safe.


End file.
